Hug Babies, Not Trees

As this Umbert strip illustrates, the logic of the environmentalist movement is often used by Umbert to defend the unborn. In one series of strips, Umbert tried to have the womb declared a federally protected wetland. In other strips, Umbert tried to enlist the sympathy of the environmental left by disguising himself as a baby harp seal, a tree, a bear, and a spotted owl, since the Supreme Court declared open season on unborn baby humans. It's only fair. The Left uses pro-life arguments to defend animal and plant life all the time. It's merely a question of priorities I suppose. We place human life at the top of the list and they place it at the bottom, somewhere between the boll weevil and the West Nile virus. Personally, as much as I love nature and animals, I find it difficult to swallow the appeals of PETA and their cohorts when many of these same people think the slaughter of human infants in their mother's wombs is a woman's inviolable right. Abortionists are brutally murdering viable late term babies and they want me to worry about a duck not having a big enough swamp to splash around in? Give me a break!

Can you imagine the reaction from the left if someone were to suggest controlling deer populations by catching the pregnant females and aborting their fawns? I guarantee you a conniption fit deluxe! Rest assured Umbert will continue to hoist these tree huggers with their own petards.

The Absurdity of Umbert

Over the years I have received numerous complaints from "the other side" that my comic strip is stupid and absurd because it features a talking, thinking baby in the womb. My initial reaction was "DUH!" Don't these people read comics? The whole idea of comics is absurdity, the suspension of disbelief so that dogs and cats and, yes, even babies can talk and think and do anything our imaginations permit. I'll be willing to bet these people never wrote to Charles Schulz to complain about his talking beagle, or to Jim Davis regarding his lasagna-eating talking cat, or to Walt Disney concerning a certain talking mouse. And I'M the absurd one?
Umbert represents the unborn child who CAN'T speak for himself and for whom many refuse to speak because they refuse to recognize that he is a REAL human being. Giving a voice to the voiceless is what Umbert is all about and, if that is absurd, then I am a dyed-in-the-wool, Camusian absurdist and proud of it. God bless cartoons and cartoonists, in all their absurd glory. Sometimes, they're the only ones who make sense out of an absurd world.

Welcome to my blog site!

This is my first blog dedicated exclusively to Umbert the Unborn. I will update this site weekly with the Umbert cartoon of the week. Whether or not you agree with my point of view, I ask that you please keep your blog entries respectful and civil as I consider Umbert to be a family feature.

Todays' cartoon features Fredo the Frozen embryo, a character I added to the strip several years ago. Fredo lives in a frozen embryo lab waiting for the doctors to give him a warm place in his mother's womb. Unfortunately, Fredo's wait seems to be interminable and he considers his assets to have been frozen indefinitely. He's all for global warming and could use about a gallon of hot chocolate. Fredo reminds us that frozen embryos are people too and that we must respect them as much as life in the womb. As a pro-life advocate, I oppose in vitro fertilization and the creation of human embryos for cold storage. While I sympathize with couples who cannot produce a child, the possibility of the human embryos being destroyed or used for scientific experimentation is not justified by the desire to have children. Fredo is my poster child for the plight of over 500,000 embryos currently in laboratory limbo.